Fluorescence detection and imaging of cellular electrical activity is a technique of great importance and potential (Grinvald, A., Frostig, R. D., Lieke, E., and Hildesheim, R. 1988. Optical imaging of neuronal activity. Physiol. Rev. 68:1285–1366; Salzberg, B. M. 1983. Optical recording of electrical activity in neurons using molecular probes. In Current Methods in Cellular Neurobiology. J. L. Barker, editor. Wiley, N.Y. 139–187; Cohen, L. B. and S. Lesher. 1985. Optical monitoring of membrane potential: methods of multisite optical measurement. In Optical Methods in Cell Physiology. P. de Weer and B. M. Salzberg, editors. Wiley, N.Y. 71–99).
Mechanisms for optical sensing of membrane potential have traditionally been divided into two classes:
(1) sensitive but slow redistribution of permeant ions from the extracellular medium into the cell, and
(2) fast but small perturbations of relatively impermeable dyes attached to one face of the plasma membrane. see, Loew, L. M., “How to choose a potentiometric membrane probe”, In Spectroscopic Membrane Probes. L. M. Loew, ed., 139–151 (1988) (CRC Press, Boca Raton); Loew, L. M., “Potentiometric membrane dyes”, In Fluorescent and Luminescent Probes for Biological Activity. W. T. Mason, ed., 150–160 (1993) (Academic Press, San Diego).
The permeant ions are sensitive because the ratio of their concentrations between the inside and outside of the cell can change by up to the Nernstian limit of 10-fold for a 60 mV change in transmembrane potential. However, their responses are slow because to establish new equilibria, ions must diffuse through unstirred layers in each aqueous phase and the low-dielectric-constant interior of the plasma membrane. Moreover, such dyes distribute into all available hydrophobic binding sites indiscriminately. Therefore, selectivity between cell types is difficult. Also, any additions of hydrophobic proteins or reagents to the external solution, or changes in exposure to hydrophobic surfaces, are prone to cause artifacts. These indicators also fail to give any shift in fluorescence wavelengths or ratiometric output. Such dual-wavelength readouts are useful in avoiding artifacts due to variations in dye concentration, path length, cell number, source brightness, and detection efficiency.
By contrast, the impermeable dyes can respond very quickly because they need little or no translocation. However, they are insensitive because they sense the electric field with only a part of a unit charge moving less than the length of the molecule, which in turn is only a small fraction of the distance across the membrane. Furthermore, a significant fraction of the total dye signal comes from molecules that sit on irrelevant membranes or cells and that dilute the signal from the few correctly placed molecules.
In view of the above drawbacks, methods and compositions are needed which are sensitive to small variations in transmembrane potentials and can respond both to rapid, preferably on a millisecond timescale, and sustained membrane potential changes. Also needed are methods and compositions that are less susceptible to the effects of changes in external solution composition, more capable of selectively monitoring membranes of specific cell types, and within intracellular organelles and providing a ratiometric fluorescence signal.
Such methods require effective methods of discriminating measurements from within defined cell populations, or subcellular structures. This invention fulfils this and related needs.